Anatole France (1844-1924) -
pseudonym for Jacques Anatole François Thibault
Writer, critic, one of the major figures of French literature in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1921. France's skepticism appears already in his early works, but later the
hostility toward bourgeois values led him to support French Communist Party.
In the 1920 his writings were put on the Index of Forbidden Books of the Roman
Catholic Church.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to
sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." (from The Red
Lily, 1894)
Anatole France was born in Paris. His real name was Jacques Anatole François
Thibault. France's father was a bookseller and called his shop the 'Librarie
de France' - from this the future writer took his surname. France acquired at
early age a love for books and reading. He was educated at the Collége
Stanislaus, where he was a mediocre student. During this period France adopted
his lifelong anti-clericalism and later constantly mocked the church and
religious doctrines in his books. On the whole France's early years, which he
depicted in My Friend's Book (1885), were happy. After failing his
baccalaureate examination several times, France finally passed it at the age
of twenty. In the 1860s he was for a time an assistant to his father, then he
was a cataloguer and publisher's assistant at Bacheline-Deflorenne and at
Lemerre. He also worked as a teacher.
When his father retired, France took a series of jobs as an editorial
assistant. He became member of the Parnassian group of poets, Gautier, Catulle,
Mendes and others, and built himself a high reputation in the literature
circles. During the Franco-Prussian War, France served briefly in the army,
and witnessed the bloodbath at the Paris Commune in 1871.
In 1875 the newspaper Le Temps commissioned France to write a series of
critical articles on contemporary writers. He started his weekly column next
year. These columns were published between 1889 and 1892 in four volumes under
the title LA VIE LITTÉRAIRE. In 1876 France was appointed with the help of the
leading Parnassian poet Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894) an assistant librarian
for the French Senate, a post he held fourteen years. Leconte de Lisle
encouraged France to publish his first collection of poems, LES POÉMES DORÉS
(1873). France's first collection of stories was published in 1879.
As a novelist France made his breakthrough with The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
(1881). Like his other works, it looked back to the 18th century as a golden
age. Its protagonist, skeptical old scholar Sylvester Bonnard, was the first
of series of fictional characters, who embody France's own personality. The
novel was praised for its elegant prose and irony and won the author a prize
from the French Academy.
France married Valérie Guérin de Sauville in 1877. The marriage ended in
divorce in 1893, several years after his liaison with Mme Arman de Caillavet (Leontine
Lippmann), a patron of arts and the great love of France's life. This period
inspired France's Christian fantasy about beauty and wisdom, THAÏS (1890),
closely related to Gustave Flaubert's The Temptation of St. Anthony. LES LYS
ROUGE (1894), a roman à clef dealing with the relationship, gained a huge
success.
Between the years 1897 and 1901 France wrote four novels under the title
Contemporary History, a fictional account of Belle Epoque. The first volume
introduced an other important France persona, monsieur Bergeret, a provisional
schoolteacher. The Queen Pédauque (1893) introduced Jerome Coignard, whom
France used as his vehicle for moral ponderings and advocate for tolerance in
The Opinions of Mr. Jerome Coignard (1893). During the 1890s and early 1900s
France argued for social reforms and attacked the shortcomings of contemporary
society and the church. In 1888 he was appointed literary critic of the
importrant newspaper Le Temps. After the Dreyfus case in the mid-1890s
France's ironic views of contemporary society became even more poignant and
disillusioned.
France resigned his library job at the Senate in 1890, and was elected to the
Académie Française in 1896. He presided at the salon of Armand de Caillavet
until her death in 1910. The last fifteen years of France's life were shadowed
by personal difficulties, some of which he created himself. His daughter
Suzanne died in 1917, his mistress Mme Arman, whom he started to deceive with
other women as early as 1904, became seriously ill and died in 1910. He
deceived his housekeeper, Emma Laprevotte, whom he later married, and an
American woman whom he had deserted, killed herself in 1911.
"We have medicines to make women speak; we have none to make them keep
silence." (from The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, 1912)
Among Frace's major later works is Penquin Island (1908), in which humanity's
evolutionary course and the history of France is allegorized satirically
through the transformation of penguins into humans - after the animals have
been baptized in error by the nearsighted Abbot Mael. The two-volume biography,
The Life of Joan of Arc (1908), was poorly received - Catholics criticized its
realistic portrayal of Joan and historians had much to say about its
historical accuracy. The Gods Are Athirst (1912) was a historical novel about
the French Revolution. In The Revolt of Angels (1914) France used the familiar
theme of religious conflict from Milton's Paradise Lost. The revolt of fallen
angels breaks out again, when a guardian angel, Arcade, is converted to free
thought by Lucretius' summary of Epicurean philosophy De rerum natura. The
work, a strong protest against violence and tyranny, was the author's last
interesting novel.
France died on October 12, 1924, in Tours, where he had moved ten years
earlier. His funeral was attended by the highest ranking members of the French
government. The poet Paul Valéry succeeded to Anatole France's chair and
delivered an unconventional address upon his predecessor. In stead of the
usual complimentary obituary, he made an attack.
"Anatole France was essentially a rationalist: he did not deny the
incongruities and incoherences of experience, but he attempted to write about
them, at least, in a simple, logical and harmonious style. Paul Valéry has set
himself, on the contrary, the task of reproducing by his very language all the
complexities and confusions of our interacting sensations and ideas. The
phenomena with which France usually deals are the events of life as it is
lived in the world; with Valéry the object of interest is the iolated or ideal
human mind, brooding on its own contradictions or admiring its own flights."
(Edmund Wilson in Axel's Castle, 1931)
NOTE: Anatole France participated in the Dreyfus case (1896) with other
writers, in front of them Émile Zola with his famous article J'Accuse. France
discussed the affair in the fourth volume of Contemporary History, entitled
Monsieur Bergeret in Paris (1901). He was the first to sign Émile Zola's
manifesto, condemning the false indictment for treason of Alfred Dreyfus, a
Jewish army captain, which had been made to protect high army officials from
the scandal of exposed corruption.
For further reading: Anatole France by J.L. May (1924); Anatole France. The
Degeneration of a Great Artist by B. Cerf (1926); The Ironic Temper by H.M.
Chevalier (1932); Anatole France 1844-1924 by E.P. Dargan (1937); Anatole
France: A Life Without Illusions by J. Axelrad (1944); Anatole France in the
United States by M.R. McEwan (1945); Anatole France and the Greek World by
L.B. Walton (1950); Anatole France: The Politics of Scepticism by C. Jefferson
(1965); by D. Tylden-Wright (1967); The Art of Anatole France by O. Bresky
(1969); Anatole France by R. Virtanen (1969); Anatole France by M. Sachs
(1974); Techniques of Irony in Anatole France by D.W. Levy (1978) - Suom.:
Francelta on myös suomennettu kertomukset Siniparran seitsemän vaimoa, Suuren
ja Pyhän Nikolauksen ihmetyö ja Paita.
Selected works:
* LES POÉMES DORÉS, 1873
* LES NOCES CORINTHIENNES, 1876 - The Bride of Corinth
* IDYLLES ET LÉGENDES, 1876
* JOCASTE ET LE CHAT MAIGRE, 1879 - Jocasta and the Famished Cat
* LE CRIME DE SYLVESTRE BONNARD, 1881 - The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard -
Instituutinjäsen Sylvestre Bonnardin rikos
* LES DÉSIRS DE JEAN SERVIEN, 1882 - The aspirations of Jean Servien
* LE LIVRE DE MON AMI, 1885 - My Friend's Book - Ystäväni kirja
* MARGUERITE, 1886
* LA VIE LITTÉRAIRE, 1882-92
* BALTHAZAR, 1889 - Balthasar
* THAÏS, 1890 - trans. - suom. - basis for Massenet's opera of 1894; adapted
also into opera stage in 1923 by Frank Crane with Mary Garden
* L'ÈTUI DE NACRE, 1892 - The Mother-of-Pearl Box
* LE PROCURATEUR DE JUDÉE, 1892
* LA RÔTISSERIE DE LA REINE PÉDAUQUE, 1893 - At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque
- At the Sign of the Web-Footed Queen / At the Sign of the Queen Pédauque -
Kuningatar Hanhenjalan ravintola
* LES OPINIONS DE JÉRÔME COIGNARD, 1893 - The Opinions of Mr. Jerome Coignard
- Apotti Coignard'n ajatuksia, suom. Eino Leino 1910 (see also: Urho Kekkonen)
* LE LYS ROUGE, 1894 - The Red Lily
* AU PETIT BONHEUR, 1894
* LE PUITS DE SAINTE-CLARE, 1895 - The Well of Santa Clara - Pyhän Klaaran
kaivolla
* LE JARDIN D'ÉPICURE, 1895 - The Garden of Epicuros
* L'HISTOIRE CONTEMPORAINE, 1897-1901 - Contemporary History: L'ORME DU MAIL,
1897 (The Elm Tree on the Mall); LE MANNEQUIN D'OSIER, 1897 (The Wicker Work
Woman); L'ANNEAU D'AMETHYSTE, 1899 (The Amethyst); MONSIEUR BERGERET À PARIS,
1901 (Monsieur Bergeret in Paris)
* PIERRE NOZIÉRE, 1898 - trans. - suom.
* L'AFFAIRE CRAINQUEBILLE, 1901 - Crainquebille - Crainquebille ja muita
kertomuksia - film 1922, dir. by Jacques Feyder
* CRAINQUEBILLE, 1902
* HISTOIRE COMIQUE, 1903 - A Mummer's Tale
* SUR LA PIERRE BLANCHE, 1905 - The White Stone - Valkoisella kivellä
* VERS LES TEMPS MEILLEURS, 1906
* L'ÍLE DES PINGOUINS, 1908 - Penguin Island - Pingviinien saari, suom. Joel
Lehtonen
* LES CONTES DE JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE, 1908 - The Merry Tales of Jacques
Tournebroche - Paistinkääntäjän pakinoita
* LA VIE DE JEANNE D'ARC, 1908 - The Life of Joan of Arc
* LES SEPT FEMMES DE LE BARBE-BLEU ET AUTRES CONTES MERVEILLEUX, 1909 - The
Seven Wives of Bluebeard and other Marvellous Tales
* LA COMÉDIE DE CELUI QUI ÉPOUSA UNE FEMME MUETTE, 1912 - The Man Who Married
a Dumb Wife
* LES DIEUX ONT SOIF, 1912 - The Gods Are Athirst - Jumalat janoavat
* LE GÉNIE LATIN, 1913
* LA RÉVOLTE DES ANGES, 1914 - The Revolt of the Angels - Enkelten kapina,
suom. Joel Lehtonen
* LE PETIT PIERRE, 1918 - Little Pierre - Pikku Pietari
* LA VIE EN FLEUR, 1922 - The Bloom of Life
* DERNIÈRES PAGES INÉDITES, 1925
* ŒUVRES COMPLETES, 1925-35
* ŒUVRES COMPLETES, 1968
* ROMANS ET CONTES, 1967
* Prefaces, Introductions, and Other Uncollected Papers, 1970
* Works, 1974 (40 vols.)